True, the cavlary is more powerful than in reality, but so are the tanks. Right now the game is very fun, very fluid and the offensive. I realize that the changes everyone would like to see, would give a more realistic appearance to force composition, but are you all realy willing to sacrifice the fluid mobility we enjoy now, for a slow, more stabilized reality. I mean lets face the facts, 10 engineers cant really build a tank factory in one month. Infantry in a fortress should be invulnerable except to a long siege. I could go on but you get the point. We sacrifice some realism for enjoyable game play. Right now, the only thing that I would change, is to make guerillas available to everyone, after all in reality, the Arabs are not the only pieople to use guerrilla warfare! Think long ad hard about reducing cavalry. The game play WILL slow down a lot if cavalry punching power or mobility is reduced. For those of you who enjoy our fast paced games, you must decide, do you enjoy this type of "mobile war" more than the "line battle, artillery duels" of the past?

Kombrig and Ironduke, you were both in the last game, how did your cavlary fair against my new formations? I feel confident that I can answer for you, they accomplised.... nothing.

At least wait a month or two before changing the cav. I really feel that once everyone sees what we are doing now, cav wont seem like such a big deal.

I think that the game can be made more fluid also if the players get more resources/PPs (like 400-600% more than now) and the research is less costly. (Mean pointed out similar thing earlier.) Then we can have real industrial warfare. At this point nobody really uses level or strategic bombers or heavy tanks in multiplayer scenarios. Trucks are rarity. We hardly upgrade anything.

I would like to see that one is able to create during the first turns a real war machine which then clashes with similar war machines.

Looking back at the last game, the only time we ever felt any threat was when Kombrig managed to sneak a large TANK force up to the front unobserved. I killed thousands of cav in the last game and you guys never even got a single city from me, and I had less cav on the field than in any previous game. I feel that our new mobile formations will consign cav to a secondary role without Vic making any changes

One must always bear in mind, cavlary are very expensive and they die in droves. I had a great deal of success with them largely due to novelty and shock value. All5n, Shadehawk, Lazyboy and a few others have no real problem containing my cavalry advances, because they are used to them now and they counter effectively, usually with light armor. As the game play continues to evolve, I feel cavalry will be reduced in significance without interference from Vic.

In the north your new units were more than once beaten by my units which consisted only cavalry.

I had three small units that were charged with stopping you from entering in the north, mission accomplished. The thing about half tracks, they retreat, but in good order and with minimal losses, and that is what we use them for. They let my "meatshields" take several good hits, from your cav, and they were still there, combat capable and ready to go.

I had a great deal of success with them largely due to novelty and shock value. All5n, Shadehawk, Lazyboy and a few others have no real problem containing my cavalry advances, because they are used to them now and they counter effectively, usually with light armor.

And to counter that one must simply add light armour to cavalry. And the cavalry isn't reduced to anywhere.

I had three small units that was charged with stopping you from entering in the north, mission accomplished.

I didn't even dream of enetring your north because there were more important theatres where to concentrate. If I would have added some light armour there, your units would have been destroyed and not only mauled like it happened in reality.

The point is, that without my half tracks, you would have sent me reeling up there. I knew that you werent making a major effort there. I kept my forces there to a bare minimum. I felt confident that you couldnt just blow by and surround them, and you couldnt nail them down and kill them. Besides, in my main assaults, I used a mixed cavalry half track force for my recon screen and the half tracks kept my cav losses to the lowest I ever had in a game. I won most of the recon skrimishes as well. Don't get me wrong, I still love cavalry. I was one of the great pioneers of cavlary in this game. I just feel that with a bit of effort and forthought, they will lose their pre eminence in the game.

I don't want to say that the new units did not had their positive sides, but I don't see that they will push the cavalry out of the scene. I still feel that cavalry is more effective choice than the new units you created. Cavalry has simply more manouver and punch than similar number of infantry with halftracks. At the same time cavalry does not cost you the valuable raw.

Yeah, if the amount of resources and PPs available to players are sicnificantly increased, then the role of the cavalry will maybe decrease beacuse it then faces a large number of halftracks, MGs etc. But in the current ATG settings it will continue to play unrealistically great role.

Cavalry is gone in one hit. Those new units took several hits each and continued to function. That will show up on the balance sheet pretty quickly if it happens everywhere all the time. Every time you hit one of my new units, you lost more cav, than I lost regular inf, you do the math. gotta to to work, continue this tonight. Meanie.

Well I think we can say that we can agree that we don't agree on everything, some want changes while others don't.

Cavalry is indeed one of my fav units, *but* it's fairly expensive, and I think I might have found a new love; Light Tanks... espcially the higher levels, fast and deadly and you can produce them in factories whereas Cavalry has to be produced in cities. Because they are so deadly, just like Cavalry, they gain Exp pretty fast too.

jreid: "It's strange to see these massive cavalry armies all over the map. It's almost like they should need their own resource, there are so many of them, but the whole thing just seems a bit silly." Maybe we need a horse resource or maybe cavalry should be separated from the infantry research track and its values adjusted separately.

jreid: "what is the rationale for their [cavalry] extreme offensive power and their great movement, especially in rough terrain?" Good question

LazyBoy: "Cavalry in our period, were used as fast moving mounted infantry and should have the same combat abilities as infantry. They should get a combat advantage [only] when fighting in good cavalry terrain. Sounds reasonable to me.

all5n: "i can safely say that the addition of cavalry has fundamentally changed the game. I will leave you to consider that statement as good or bad as you see fit." Wholeheartedly agree.

Only two units have been added to ATG since its release almost two years ago: cavalry and the jeep. Without a doubt the cavalry unit, as stated by all5n, has had a major impact on random game play. The jeep is hardly noticeable. Officers have now been added and its too early to tell what their impact will be but so far I'm liking what I see. Half-tracks at one time were incredibly expensive but thankfully that was toned down some time ago. We all want a fun game. There are many abstractions in any game but in a WW2 era wargame we do want some similarity to the time period of World War II. Whether cavalry and guerrillas get some tweaking or not, we still have a great game in ATG.

I will anyway. First of all, i consider stock ATG, as a mod like any of the others out there. So that being said, it is no different than say the Bombur Mod and other mods, except that this one comes with the game officially. I see ATG as a collection of mods, and I think it is wrong to focus so much energy on the stock mod, demanding/asking changes for it. That being said I can see that some people like this "mod" and care for it. I like that.

Coming from that point of view, I don´t really have much of an oppinion on what should be added and not, what I do feel though is this (apart from every unit being way to generic, imho): Cavalry really should have a seperate research tree, and it is not really hard to make it so it has one. That the arabs are the only ones having Guerillas can in some sense be defended, considering the starting time of the mod. Guerilla warfare was not that well advanced, in Japan, China, USA, etc ect. In fact the british only learned it during the later parts of ww2. So i find there is ample historic reason to keep these troops arab only....

No need to hide. As far as Cavalry goes everyone can build them so build them until they aren't useful anymore. Then switch to a higher tech method of war fighting. In WW2 cavalry was very useful in road poor areas.

_____________________________

"Patriotism: Your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." - George Bernard Shaw

That 'officially' carries a lot more weight than any other mod. As you say its stock ATG, not a third party "unofficial" mod that requires user action beyond just installing the game. That said, ATG is highly moddable which is one of its strengths.

quote:

ORIGINAL: ernieschwitz

First of all, i consider stock ATG, as a mod like any of the others out there. So that being said, it is no different than say the Bombur Mod and other mods, except that this one comes with the game officially.

True Webizen, true. But it is not a very developed mod, if you ask me. Not alot of detail to dig into. Which is why I think these discussions are alittle... ummm... like trying to fix a bicycle by deciding if the bell goes on the left or right part of the steering wheel...

That being said: You have all the right in the world to discuss these things. And my other points I can see apparantly didn´t go down well either, since they have been not commented on.

The intent of these discussions is to suggest improvements to a game we all enjoy playing. I wouldn't assume your other points "didn't go over well" simply because no one has yet to comment on them. We both mentioned that perhaps cavalry should have its own research track.

quote:

ORIGINAL: ernieschwitz

True Webizen, true. But it is not a very developed mod, if you ask me. Not alot of detail to dig into. Which is why I think these discussions are alittle... ummm... like trying to fix a bicycle by deciding if the bell goes on the left or right part of the steering wheel...

That being said: You have all the right in the world to discuss these things. And my other points I can see apparantly didn´t go down well either, since they have been not commented on.

Well, now that it has come up again, the research is ridiculously overpriced. Allan and I both pointed out that nobody uses any techs because if you tech and your opponent builds tank factories, you're dead. If the techs are ever going to come into general use, I believe the cost per tech should drop by at least 25%. I am all for adding more ingredients into the battle cauldron, not less. Any one agree about the cost of tech?

Here is an example of what I see in many games of late: cavalry and tanks with some infantry. If this weren't repeated all over the battlefield, then it wouldn't be as big an issue. Of course the issue is really one of perception and comparison to World War II. It isn't an issue of balance because everyone can do the same thing. For those of us concerned about it, it is simply because we don't believe it is an very accurate abstraction of cavalry use during this time period and has changed how ATG plays. That isn't necessarily good or bad but definitely different. In random games with at start nations, a player begins with lots of infantry. What seems to happen is that players immediately begin producing lots of cavalry and quickly building tank factories. You then get these tank/cavalry attack groups. This particular group is small compared to some I've seen. Enough said... ATG is fun regardless.

Web put up a screen shot from the last game with the slick new formations. These formations are lighter on cav than is usual.The recon screen we kept out in front of our tanks had more mobility and about the same recon value, but they could take several hits and still perform their assigned funtion, recon/meatshield. Cav is not going to disappear, especially from my armies, but I think they are going to lose their pre-eminence on the battlefield. In that last game, our enemy's cavalry did not accomplish anything worth bragging about, or even worth the amount of production spent on them. Our style of game play evolves all the time. Don't get stuck in a rut. I am learning to deal with cav, everyone else can too. Meanie.

Sorry Kombrig, I just re-read all of this and see that you raised the issue of expensive tech as well. I agee, if they were less expensive they would get used more. Lately the only techs I ever see purchased in team games are , light tank II, medium tank, heavy artillery and now I have started buying halftracks. One time we tried to go for Staff II to go with rifle/smg II, but it was out of the question, and we settled for rifle/smg II. It would be fun to have a little more fluidity in the tech department.

My personal feeling is that there are too many resources sometimes. I like research to be expensive. If you have unlimited ore you can build ridiculous numbers of tanks from tank factories as described above. This is my opinion only but if you want to build a bazillion tanks and do a zerg rush there are other games that do it better. I enjoy a game with hard economic decisions that can pay off but not be made lightly. I can picture France before WW2: "What do we do about the Germans?" "Simple. We build about 100 of these million franc tank factories and build 500 tanks a week for a year and then, at the end of a year, 25000 tanks and no more German problem." That is not anything like history I am afraid. Well for some I guess it might be. Just me.

_____________________________

"Patriotism: Your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." - George Bernard Shaw

If might add something to this, the decline of the use of cavalry. Reflects the rise in effectiveness of small arms and infantry weapons in general. Cavalry for thousands of years were often the deadliest offensive force on the battlefield fast heavy and maneuverable with tremendous shock value. What I will say is that what we have in ATG are not cavalry but mounted infantry. The Soviets used mounted infantry in large numbers for their ability to travel quickly accross terrain impassable for motorized vehicles. The mounted infantry would have MG Morters AT weapons etc carried by horses. These mounted infantry had tremendous advantages on the Russian Steppe. But they mostly would fight on foot using the horses as pack animals and more reliable means of transport. In the west Cavalry had all but dissappeared as combat units. Even the famous Cavalry charges of the Polish Cavalry against the German light tanks proved to be a myth. The Polish cavalry dismounted to fight and in effect were mounted Infantry. So in effect the difference between Infantry and Cavalry are the same differences that exsisted during the 2nd World War and most modern wars with a mounted element. Heavy Weapons. Infantry Divisions normally had attached Heavy Weapons Cavalry Divisions did not due to the reasons stated if you cannot get motorised units over certain terrain you can't take Heavy Weapons either. So in combat capability Cavalry/Mounted Infantry and Infantry should be almost comparable. Thats not the immpression I get in ATG is that Cavalry have a shock value or combat bonus against infantry. Appropriate during the Napoleonics but not in the age of the Modern Rifle and MG.

Eveyone should stop and think about this. We already sacrifice much realism for enjoyable game play. If cavalry are not realistically modeled, neither are tanks. Several guys were complaining a few weeks ago that a couple of light tanks pull up and honk their horns and the dug in defenders of the city fled in panic.

So if cav is changed, what then? Reduce tanks?

The game is really fun right now. When I showed up, evey guy I played was doing the exact same thing. Long lines of troops sealing up everyones borders, and attrition/production warfare using massive amounts of artillery to push the line back a little at a time, and the games were not that exciting. Right now we have wars with fantastic manuever, with dashing attacks and counter attacks. I would like to see more movement and manuever, not less. Try a game with no cav at all, see what you think. Trust me, it is much more fun with them, and just the way they are. The game is not an exact recreation of reality. This game however is the most realistic Strategic/Operational game that I have ever come accross. Every one should quit fretting about little tactical details, and concentrate on the real causes of their repeated defeats, and those reasons are almost always Strategic/Operational, rather than tactical.

I still say that our new force structure will largely neutralize cavalry anyway. Meanie.